XIII.-THE HEART OF LOVE.
The day lilies were in bloom, and that meant August; it meant also that her book was written, rewritten, and ready to be copied.
"Oh, that my poor little book were as perfect as you," she sighed one morning as she arranged them with their broad, green leaves for the vases in parlor and sitting-room. "But G.o.d made you with His own fingers, and He made my book through my own fancies."
She had worked early and late, not flagging, through all the sultry days. "You will make yourself sick," her mother had warned, "and it will cost you all you earn to buy beef tea and pay the doctor; so where is the good of it?"
She had read her ma.n.u.script aloud to her father, and he had laughed and wiped his eyes and given sundry appreciative exclamations.
"That writing takes a precious sight of time," her mother had remonstrated.
"That is because I am human." Tessa had answered soberly.
"Suppose it is refused."
"Then I"ll be like William Howitt; his book was refused four times and he stood on London bridge ready to toss it over. I do not think that I will do as Charlotte Bronte did; she sent a rejected ma.n.u.script to a publisher wrapped in the wrapper in which the first publisher had rolled it. I suppose that his address was printed on it."
She had run on merrily as she had placed the cool, pure lilies in the vase; but her heart was sinking, nevertheless. It had always taken so little to exhilarate or depress her.
"Must you write to-day?" inquired her mother one morning in an unsatisfied tone.
"Several hours."
"I wanted you to make calls with me and to help me with the currant jelly and to put those b.u.t.ton-holes into my linen wrapper."
"I can do it all, but I must write while I am fresh."
The first hour she wrote wearily; then she lost the small struggles in her own life and became comforted through the comfort wherewith she comforted others. Not one thing was forgotten, not one household duty shirked, the jelly was made to perfection, the b.u.t.ton-holes worked while her mother was taking her afternoon nap, the calls were pushed through, and then Mrs. Wadsworth proposed a call upon Mrs. Towne.
"I promised your Aunt Dinah that I would call."
Tessa demurred although she remembered her promise; she much preferred calling some time when Aunt Dinah should be with her; Mrs. Wadsworth insisted and Tessa yielded more graciously in manner than in mind.
Mrs. Towne received them most cordially and gracefully; an expression flitted over her eyes as Tessa looked up into them that she never forgot; it touched her as Dr. Lake"s eyes did, sometimes; what could this beautiful old mother need in her? Whatever it might be, she felt fully prepared to give it.
Mrs. Wadsworth was as effusively talkative as usual; Tessa replied when spoken to; lively, fussy, pretty little Mrs. Wadsworth did not compare to her own advantage with her womanly daughter. Mrs. Towne looked at Tessa and thought of the picture that she had seen; it was certainly excellent only that the picture was rather too intellectual; in the picture she might have written "Mechanism of the Heavens" but sitting there in the crimson velvet chair with a pale blue bow among her braids and her soft gray veil shading her cheek she was more like the daughter that she had ever dreamed of-simple, sweet, and thoroughly lovable Mrs.
Towne was a trifle afraid of a woman who looked _too_ intellectual.
Would she forgive Ralph and trust him again? She was sure that she would until Tessa unb.u.t.toned her glove and drew it off; the slight, strong hand was a revelation; the girl had a will of her own. But might not her will be towards him? "I wish that I knew nothing," thought the mother, "the suspense will weary me, the disappointment will be nearly as much for me as for the boy."
Meanwhile, unconscious Tessa, with the glove in her fingers, was far away in the Milan cathedral on the wall opposite her, looking into the arches of the choir, feeling the sunlight through the glimmering painted windows, thinking about the procession of the scarlet-robed priests, and wondering about the hidden chancel; if the picture were upon her wall how it would glow and become alive in the western light, the drooping banners would stir with the breath of the evening, the censers would swing and the notes of the organ would bear her up and away. Away!
Where? Was not all her world in this little Dunellen?
"My son is always busy; he rushes into every thing that he undertakes."
The mother had a voice like the son"s; the soul of sincerity was in it; the sincere, sympathetic voice, the rush of feeling, love, regret, and sense of loss that it brought filled her eyes too full to be raised. At that instant Mrs. Towne was observing her; her heart grew lighter, hoping for the thing that might be.
Mrs. Towne held Tessa"s hand at parting. "I am an old woman, so I may ask a favor of a young one, will you come soon again?"
"Thank you, yes."
"And often?"
Then she had to promise again. Dr. Towne was seldom at home; she thought of this when she promised. She was thinking of it that evening in the early twilight as she weeded among her pansies. Dine said that it was a wonder that she had not turned into a pansy herself by this time.
"Daughter, why do you sigh?"
Her father was seated in a rustic chair on the piazza with a copy of _Burns_ unopened upon his knee; he had left the store earlier than usual that afternoon, complaining of the old pain in his side.
"My sigh must be very loud or your ears very sharp," she replied, lifting her head. "I will bring you some perfect pansies."
He took them and looked down at them; she stood at his side smoothing the straggling locks on his bald forehead with her perfumed, soiled fingers. "I think that if I knew nothing about G.o.d but that He made pansies, I should love Him for that," she said at last.
"Is _that_ what you were sighing over?"
"The sigh came out of the heart of the pansy. I wish I knew how to love somebody."
"Is that what you were sighing over?"
"I do not know how," rubbing the soil from her fingers, "to love when I lose faith. I do not know how and it worries me."
"You mean that you do not know how to honor and trust when you lose faith. Are you so far on the journey of life as that? Must I congratulate you, daughter?"
"No; teach me."
"No human teaching can teach you to love where you have lost faith."
"Well; n.o.body asks me to!"
"If any body ever does, look at your own failings; that pulls me through."
"I understand that," still speaking in a troubled voice, "but all the love and patience do no good; people do not change because we love them."
"No, they do not change, but _we_ change."
"That is not enough for me; I am not satisfied with the blessing of giving, I want the other somebody to have the blessing of receiving."
"We do not know the end."
"You two people do find queer things to talk about," cried a lively voice behind them. "If I knew what mystical meant, I should say that it was you and Tessa. Don"t you want to hear all about Mrs. Towne, and what a _lovely_ room we were taken into?"
"Yes, dear, and how her hair was fixed and just how she was dressed."
Tessa ran back to her pansies; Mrs. Wadsworth had found a theme to enlarge upon for the next half hour. As Tessa worked among the flowers, a poem that she had learned that day while making the b.u.t.ton-holes sang itself through and through her heart.
"Oh the hurt and the hurt and the hurt of love!
Wherever the sun shines, the waters go, It hurts the snowdrop, it hurts the dove, G.o.d on His throne, and man below.